AUSTIN — A provision to buy Jones County’s empty prison was part of the budget bill worth about $875 million that a House committee unanimously approved on Thursday.

Supplemental appropriations bill HB 1025, which now goes before the entire House for a vote, includes $500 million for public education, further reducing the effects of the $5.4 billion cuts during the last legislative session.

House members briefly debated whether or not to keep a provision that would buy the prison in Jones County for $19.5 million — still far less than what the building cost.

The state had made a deal with the county to build the prison, but the inmate population went down, thereby rendering the prison useless but with Jones County still footing the bill.

“We looked at, what could we do to have some dealings with removing the financial obligation for the expenditure that was put forth for this prison,” said Rep. Susan King, R-Abilene. “At the end of the day, this was an agreement the state made, and it was broken. It’s unprecedented. ... Now we’re looking at a county that has made no payments on this building, they’re in financial distress over it.”

King pointed out that the building cost more than $35 million, and she didn’t know what would happen if bond holders don’t accept the deal.

Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, pushed against the measure to buy the prison.

“It’s not needed,“ Turner said of the prison.

HB 1025 also includes than $174 million in payments for wildfire costs. That money would come out of the so-called Rainy Day Fund, a fund fueled with oil and gas taxes estimated to have $11.8 billion by the end of 2015.

HB 1025 would be the second supplemental appropriations bill.

Lawmakers have already passed and the governor has signed into law an emergency supplemental appropriations budget bill of about $6.6 billion to cover the cost of Medicaid, government health care for the poor, and to undo deferred school payments.